SPEAKERS
PLENARY SPEAKERS
CHRISTOPHER DANIELS
Emeritus Professor Christopher Daniels has made an extraordinary contribution to science and science education in Australia. The former university academic and now government scientist educates and communicates through his ABC Radio program and via a host of different modalities and organisations to promote wildlife conservation and nature appreciation. As chair of the Green Adelaide and a member of dozens of other Environmental Boards and committees, he’s leading many efforts to ‘rewild’ the city and connect citizens with nature.
LINDA GALLÉ
Linda Gallé is Group Lead Exhibitions at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin. With a
background in biology, she has been developing exhibitions and participatory approaches to science communication since 2014. She is currently involved in developing the museum’s new permanent galleries as part of its ongoing transformation. Linda has collaborated with international partners such as the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) and WWF and is an alumna of The Museums Lab, a programme connecting museum professionals from Africa and Europe. Her work explores how natural history collections can engage diverse audiences, open up new perspectives and create spaces for dialogue and critical reflection. Most recently, she and her colleagues developed a co-curation project exploring new approaches to presenting colonial collections to the public.
MARTHA IMAKANDO
Martha Imakando is current a board member in the ICOM NATHIST committee. She is a Curator in the Natural History Department at the Livingstone Museum, Zambia, with over 10 years of experience in biodiversity conservation. Her work spans research, collections Management, exhibitions, and public engagement. She is passionate about decolonization in museums, integrating social science into natural history practice, and advancing environmental conservation and sustainability through inclusive museum practice. She was recently involved as a Co-curator in the mammal collection at the Natural History Museum in Berlin where she focused on incorporating indigenous interpretations to natural history collections.
NICOLE KEARNEY
Nicole Kearney is Manager of the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) Australia at Museums Victoria and Communications Director for the global BHL consortium. A zoologist by training, she has led BHL Australia since 2018, building a national network of museums, herbaria, libraries, universities, government agencies, scientific societies, and other organisations working together to make Australia's biodiversity literature freely accessible online.
In her global role, Nicole has played a key part in BHL's transition to an independent, community-led consortium, leading international communications, fundraising, and stakeholder engagement. She is passionate about international collaboration, open access to biodiversity knowledge, and strengthening connections between natural history collections, scientific literature, biodiversity data, and the people who create and use them.
WEN-LING LIN
Dr. Wen-Ling Lin is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Ethnology, Academia
Sinica, Taiwan. Drawing on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork and informed by sociocultural and historical perspectives, her scholarship focuses on Indigenous peoples in Taiwan — particularly the Rukai and Paiwan communities of Pingtung — and spans a range of interconnected concerns: the politics of road infrastructure and temporal sovereignty in remote homelands; the geosociality of water; water–atmosphere–sky multispecies sensing and more-than-human world-making; visual anthropology and digital ethnography; and public anthropology and curatorial practice. Her recent curatorial work in the North River Basin of Ailiao includes co-curating "Kadadaranae: Footprints, Dance, Steps" (2023), an exhibition held in the Kudrengere tribe of Wutai County, one of her fieldwork cooperative groups; and a digital co-creation exhibition on the ancestral house of Aptwane in Kabalelhadhane tribe, which has been launched this year. Both projects bring together community elders, cultural workers, and institute researchers to co-create collections, exhibitions, and their public presentations—a work that reflects her long-standing commitment to academic research rooted in and responsible to the community.